It seems some men still haven’t gotten the memo that women will no longer be treated like second-class citizens. Last month, in an issue devoted to women in medicine, the Dallas Medical Journal asked area doctors what they thought of the fact that female physicians’ salaries are reportedly one-third less than male physicians 1 and one male doc gave a candid and irresponsible response that has the medical community up in arms. (And rightfully so.)
Gary Tigges, an internal medicine doctor at Plano Internal Medicine Associates said, “Female physicians do not work as hard and do not see as many patients as male physicians. This is because they choose to, or they simply don’t want to be rushed, or they don’t want to work the long hours. Most of the time, their priority is something else…. Family, social, whatever. Nothing needs to be ‘done’ about this unless female physicians actually want to work harder and put in the hours. If not, they should be paid less. That is fair.”2
Check out the post below.
After reading the comment it was reposted. And guess what? It’s gone viral.
Hala Sabry-Elnaggar wrote on Facebook, “Thank you for publicly displaying your disgusting thoughts on the value of women physicians in the workplace. Women physicians have been proven to put their skills into their work with better mortality outcomes and they continue to do this despite the discrimination more than 80% of them face at work. So please educate yourself beyond your medical degree about what your colleagues are doing…and how their presence is important to the healthcare team and to their patients.”3
Thankfully, because justice is often poetic, check out the Tweet below:
Interestingly, the *female* communications director of the Journal intentionally published it knowing the potential backlash.https://t.co/0cqAgUuMPL
He clearly needs more than one class in bias and reinforcing misconceptions created by our cultural constructs.— Jennifer Taylor (@lonestarjen) September 1, 2018
After the justified uproar over his ignorant comments, Tigges tried to walk back his statement telling the Dallas Morning Journal, “My response sounds terrible and horrible and doesn’t reflect what I was really trying to say.”4 He tried to explain that the gap “is actually due to the fact that male doctors are more likely to see more patients, while female doctors spend more time with each patient,”5 and that his intention wasn’t to say that female physicians are lazy or don’t work as hard. He then wrote a long response to his comments and posted on his website. You can read it here.
Gabriela M. Zandomeni, a physician and chair of the Dallas County Medical Society Communications Committee, explained why she decided to publish Tigges’ answer even though it angered her.
“I also was outraged at the many more opinions claiming that gender pay does not exist. This is not a new concept; there are many more physicians who do not see the discrimination, the misguided prejudices that influence our employment. The danger is not in this single physician’s response, however misogynistic and insulting it was. The danger is in the physicians who think this but do not express it, or who justify it: ‘Well … women have more family responsibilities, or women will have their husband’s income and treat this as a hobby,’ etc. Many of these people are in power and influence when women are offered less pay than their male counterparts. This needs to be exposed! The other part to this is apathy. When no one cares, there is no momentum for change.”6
Please feel free to share this far and wide. We’ve got to fight against attitudes and beliefs like these or they will never change.
